The first incident occurred when movie producer
Walt Disney was approached to help produce a UFO
documentary in 1957. A decade after Emenegger and
Sandler, documentary film producer Linda Moulton
Howe and HBO were approached and offered the same
Holloman landing film along with a film of the
live alien that lived in a Los Alamos safe house
from 1949-1952. (see Howe story below)

Ward Kimball, an animator and producer who had
been with Walt Disney since 1934, told the 1957
UFO film story. He was one of the original nine
Disney animators called the "Nine Old
Men" by Walt Disney. As an animator Kimball
was best known for his creation of Jiminy Cricket
in the movie Pinocchio, and Dumbo in
the movie of the same name.

More importantly, Kimball initiated, produced,
and directed three space films that appeared on Tomorrowland,
a what-if television show developed to illustrate
the possibilities of space. The three films were
"Man in Space," "Man and the
Moon," and "Mars and Beyond." The
first of these was so popular (viewed by over 42
million people) that according to Kimball
President Eisenhower phoned Walt Disney from the
White House looking for a copy of the production.

"It impressed President Eisenhower - I
can remember this- and the next day he phoned
Walt and wanted to borrow a print of it! Walt
wanted to know why, and he said: 'Well, I'm
going to show it to all those stove-shirt
generals who don't believe we're going to be
up there!'"

Kimball told the story of Walt Disney’s UFO
partnership with the government at a 1979 MUFON
Convention speech. He stated in the speech that
around 1957 or 1958 Walt Disney was contacted by
the USAF and asked to cooperate on a documentary
about UFOs. The USAF offered to supply actual UFO
footage, just as they had done for Emenegger and
Sandler in 1972 and 1985, and as they had to Linda
Howe in 1983.

According to Kimball, Disney went along with
the USAF plan. This compliance was in accord with
the many rumors that indicated Disney was a
patriotic, conservative, anti-communist who was
willing to work with the government.

The FBI file on Walt Disney, for example,
stated that on December 16, 1954 Disney was made a
SAC Contact, elevated from an informant. The
confidential internal FBI memo read,

"Because of Mr. Disney’s position as
the foremost producer of cartoon files in the
motion picture industry, and his prominence
and wide acquaintanceship in film production
matters, it is believed that he can be of
valuable assistance to this office . . .
"

Being a contact would allow him to take reports
from other informers. As a part of this
association Disney wrote a number of reports to
the FBI during the McCarthy communist scare days
of the 1950s.

On the day Walt Disney died, J. Edgar Hoover
sent a letter of condolences to Walt’s wife
Lillian. At the bottom of the file copy of the
letter a handwritten notation was made to remove
Walt Disney’s name as an active SAC Contact.

The FBI – Disney association gave the FBI
"full access to the facilities of Disneyland
for use, in connection with official matters and
recreational purposes." All Disney movies
that involved any references to the FBI had to be
sent to the FBI for approval.

Disney had apparently made a deal in 1936 with
the FBI to write reports on subversive authorities
inside Hollywood in exchange for the FBI
determining Walt Disney’s true lineage. Disney
was apparently very uncertain of his real lineage,
and this uncertainty was reflected in many of his
film characters. Pinocchio, for example, was alone
and desperately wanted to be Gepetto’s boy. In
the movie Dumbo, Dumbo was the small baby elephant
that had been separated from his mother. Finally,
the prime character in Snow White was an abandoned
stepchild.

Once Walt Disney had met with the USAF he began
to work on the requested UFO documentary for the
general public. He asked his animators to think up
what an alien would look like. Meanwhile, he
waited for the Air Force to deliver the promised
film.

After some period of time the Air Force
re-contacted Disney and told him the offer was
being withdrawn. There would be no UFO footage as
promised. Kimball told researcher Stanton Friedman
that once he found out there would be no delivery
of UFO film, he personally spoke with an Air Force
Colonel who told him, "there indeed was
plenty of UFO footage, but that neither Ward, nor
anyone else, was going to get access to it."

Disney, however, carried on without the film.
According to one account of the story,

" Disney cancelled the project, but by
this time a lot of animated film of ‘creatures’
had been completed by his artists."

"So Disney went ahead and made a short
"documentary" anyway, featuring
Jonathan Winters impersonating various
"characters" associated with typical
UFO lore."

"I specifically recall Mr. Winters as
an old lady/grandmother who saw a UFO and
reported it... then he portrayed the Air Force
officer who investigated the sightings and
offered
explanations. He also portrayed a little boy
in a room who had a telescope looking up at
the stars and, to the little boy's
amazement, an alien came through the telescope
into his room (I think I've got this right).
Of course the boys father didn't believe that
story."

The movie was never shown in public, but
Kimball did show it at the 1979 Symposium. The
movie, however, did not contain any of the
dramatic UFO footage and live aliens everyone had
been promised.

As an interesting footnote to the Disney story,
Emenegger reported that he and Sandler had also
talked with the Disney people in the time period
when they were working on the documentary. The
people who they spoke to at the Disney studios
"seemed to be involved and interested, but
not have any particularly startling data."

Recent information arising from
controversy surrounding the 1995 "Alien
Autopsy" indicates that the Disney studio
might just have gotten some film, and just didn’t
use it, or got it after the movie was finished.

The story that indicates there may have been
film comes from a prominent UK photographer Mike
Maloney. Mike Maloney is the Group Chief
Photographer at Mirror Group Newspapers, a fellow
with both the Royal Photographic Society and the
British Institute of Professional Photographers.
Maloney has won many awards, 96 by one count,
including Press Photographer of the Year three
times.

In the 1970s, Maloney was dining with the head
of Disney, and four of the original nine Disney
animators while on a trip to the Disney
Corporation in Los Angeles. While this was going
on Maloney was introduced to another man,
identified in one account a "well-known
Disney employee."

The man offered to show Maloney some unusual
film footage at his house. When Maloney saw it he
described it as "old footage of UFOs,"
and "two beings that he was told were
aliens."

UFO investigator Georgina Bruni interviewed
Mike Maloney about his early 1970s encounter at
Disney. She described what Maloney told her about
the aliens he had been shown on the film:

"One, which appeared to be dead, was
laid out on a table - or slab, the other was
clearly alive and moving around on the floor.
He was given no information as to the source
of the footage, which he was told was
"top secret", but he was in no doubt
that it was a genuine piece of old film. Mike
described it as being similar to the alien
autopsy footage that had been shown on
television. At no time did he say it was the
same, just similar. Of the footage he
personally viewed, he said: ‘If the film
that I saw was a fake, it was a brilliant
fake.’"

This is a promotional poster
for the Flying Saucer ride built at
Disneyland in 1955. It was a part of the
Tomorrowland section of the park.